Stock rotation

[bcron]

I just started trying something and wanted to see if anybody else had tried.

In locations where items such as chips with shorter expiration dates don't sell well, I still offer them, but as the date gets within about a week or two, I will pull those items out, replace them with fresh and then when I get to my higher-volume locations, I will use those items that I pulled from the other locations to stock them first.  That way they get sold before I get stuck with them. 

I only started a couple of months ago doing this, but have found that I am getting much less expired stock.  The summer will be the kicker when my highest volume customer - a high school - is off for a couple of months.  That will be the test on whether I can rotate stuff through other locations quickly enough.

I thought it might be a pain in the backside, but so far it hasn't been too bad.  I have 12 locations with 9 pop and 12 snack machines out.

[Big Mike]

This is the way to do it. A little more work but well worth it. We do this a little on the bulk side also. Cant afford to be throwing MMP out.

Mike

[tedk]

I do this all the time. I don't wait until one or two weeks out though! When I'm down to a month I am moving things. With low volume accounts I always change out the product to the longest date I have available, even if it has 5 or 6 weeks left. If I have eight week product, it goes into the slowest accounts. It seems ironic that the worst customer always has the freshest stock, but it is the only way I know to reduce the expired items. It is more work, but I have less than one percent loss with chips doing it this way.